Ontario, Huawei Canada partner in $300M 5G project

5G Ontario is expected to create 250 new R&D jobs in the province.

The Ontario government and telecom gear maker Huawei Canada yesterday announced plans to pour some $316 million dollars into a research and development project focused on 5th generation wireless technology and positioning the province as a global tech hub.

The project, called 5G Ontario, will see Huawei Canada invest a total of $300 million, over a five-year period, in advanced communication research that will create 250 R&D jobs in the provinces as the company establishes new research laboratories in its facilities in Ottawa, Markham and Waterloo. The Ontario government will invest up to $16 million through the province’s Jobs and Prosperity Fund to support 5G Ontario.

“This builds on my first trade mission to China in 2014, where it Huawei announced it will invest $210 million to expand R&D in Ontario and create 250 top quality, high-skill jobs,” Premier Kathleen Wynne said yesterday during her visit to Huawei’s Canadian headquarters in Markham, Ont. Our top priorities are economic growth and creating good jobs.”

Wynne’s trade missions to China in November 2015 and to India earlier this year, are expected to create approximately 1,850 jobs in Ontario through more than 100 agreements and memoranda of understandings. The total value of the agreements is estimated at $2.8 billion. the premier led two trade missions to China. Her 2014 trip resulted in nearly $1 billion new investment in the province while here 2015 trip resulted in agreements worth approximately $2.5 billion.

“Huawei is expanding its R&D operations in Ontario because it has a vibrant innovation ecosystem and an excellent pool of technology talent,” said Sean Yang, president of Huawei Canada. “Good things grow in Ontario.

5G denotes the next phase of mobile telecommunications standards, according to Yang. “It is capable of speeds up to 100 times faster than the current 4G technology.”

5G Ontario will focus on research initiatives around faster Internet speeds, as well as related technologies such as cloud computing, data analytics, and mobile security, according to Scott Bradley, vice-president of corporate affairs for Huawei Canada.

“Our initiative has three parts,” he said. “One is concerned with making the transmission of data from point A to point B faster. The other concerns what you with the data. And that concerns computing capacity and storage capacity. And the third is about application–how to get information out of sensors and how to manage it and maintain integrity.”

About this author

Nestor is a Toronto-based journalist who specializes in writing about technology and business. He is the editor of Vanguard Magazine and the associate editor of IT in Canada and a regular contributor to CGE.